5.1 Introduction to ColdFusion MX

ColdFusion is a tag-based language, built as an
extension to HTML. It is designed for simplicity of use and rapid
application development. The ColdFusion programmer can create complex
business logic using a few simple tags.

ColdFusion tags and their attributes implement commonly needed
functionality. These attributes can be likened to the properties of
an object. For example, a <cfmail> tag has
to, from, and
subject attributes. When the ColdFusion
application server sees a <cfmail> tag, it
sends an email according to the specified attributes.
It's that simple.

ColdFusion MX is written in Java and runs as a Java servlet. The
ColdFusion application server is a page preprocessor. User requests
are passed from the web server to the ColdFusion Server. Tags in the page are
executed sequentially. The first time the page is accessed on the
Web, the page is compiled into a Java servlet. Each access after that
benefits from the speed of compiled code.

ColdFusion Components are the closest thing in ColdFusion to the
concept of object-oriented programming. With a CFC, you have a
self-contained object containing methods that can be called by other
ColdFusion pages, CFCs, or Flash applications. They can also act as
web services to allow virtually any consumer of web services to
access their methods. CFCs as they relate to Flash
don't follow the concept of instantiation; when you
call a CFC, you are calling
a static object.
CFCs support the notion of an instance of a CFC, but this involves
the
use of the session or application scope, which is not accessible from
Flash.

While CFC instances are not accessible to Flash, you can create other
CFCs that act as wrapper objects, allowing the
use of session or application instances of other CFCs.